One might imagine that Doug Sahm came up with the idea of forming the Texas Tornados — his Tex-Mex supergroup with Chicano country crooner Freddy Fender, conjunto music legend Flaco Jimenez, and Sahm’s Sir Douglas Quintet compadre Augie Meyers — while sipping Corona con lima in a rustic cantina down…
Stephen Kennedy, president and founder of iSong.com, is a little sheepish when discussing his company’s origins. Nervous laughs replace the periods at the end of his sentences. At first, it’s difficult to discern what he’s so skittish about. Maybe he’s embarrassed by the fact that iSong.com, a Dallas-based Web site,…
Buck Jones Bliss (One Ton Records) You can’t love or hate Buck Jones — there’s nothing but middle ground with the band. There’s just not enough on the band’s latest, Bliss — or 1997’s Shimmer, for that matter — to inspire such strong feelings…or any feelings, really. Sure, the band…
There is perhaps no man in the music business as smart as Dwight Yoakam — not necessarily biz smart (not a wise move wearing out “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” in a Gap ad before it surfaced on the recent best-of), not even book smart (never gave him a pop…
The standard for bands these days seems to be release an album and tour, then record and release another album as quickly as possible to cash in before the craze winds down and the band becomes one more in a holding pattern on the VH1 Where Are They Now? runway…
Listening to Soul Coughing songwriter-guitarist Michael Doughty sing is like cranking up the garbage disposal just for fun. No, wait — it actually sounds as if Doughty has already swallowed the garbage disposal whole. His choppy, nearly spoken-word mode of singing only serves to reinforce the analogy. But that’s not…
Vibrolux, at last Kim Pendleton is pondering the question of why she and Paul Quigg moved back to Dallas last February, waving farewell to Los Angeles and the corpse of a record deal. “Why? Why?” she repeats, giggling in a high, hoarse voice. For a moment, she seems to be…
For several months, Paul Burch had planned to host a free punk festival at Arlington’s Veterans Park. Burch intended the festival, Acts of Defiance, as a way for people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area “to get to know one another so that they can see that skin color and clothing…
Ride with Ray There is perhaps no better friend to the memory of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys than Ray Benson. Benson and his band, Asleep at the Wheel, have been playing Wills’ music almost longer than he did over the course of their three-decade career. Benson’s love for…
Scene, heard Rockville Music officially called it quits on July 14, closing up shop after more than half a decade in business. The store, located at 2811 N. Henderson, will remain open for a few days a week for a while, but only so customers can pick up any instruments…
Even at his “funkiest” — and just try using that word with a straight face when talking about David Byrne — the former art-schooler has as much rhythm as an anthropologist lost in the bush with a tape recorder in one hand and a notepad in the other. He knows…
You can’t say that Denton’s Clutch Cargo doesn’t take care of business on its debut, Colon Bruising Sounds, blitzing through 11 tracks in less than 28 minutes. Produced by ex-Hagfish bassist Doni Blair, the disc is a constant sprint to the finish line, almost ending before it begins; the album…
Chris Hillman knew Gram Parsons perhaps better than anyone, or at least as well as anyone could know a wealthy young man dedicated to living fast, loving hard, dying young, and leaving a beautiful memory. It was Hillman who brought Parsons into the Byrds in 1968; and it was Hillman…
George Gimarc hasn’t had any real contact with the radio station he helped found, KDGE-FM (94.5), in about three years, since he released the 11th, and most likely last, installment of his Tales From the Edge series. As a group, the Tales From the Edge compilations are like portable histories…
Journey, Foreigner Easy targets, both of these bands — you can smell the bull’s-eyes on their foreheads from a thousand miles away. So get your e-mails ready, you old farts out there with your blood boiling, as we sharpen our butter knives and prepare for a little rock-and-roll tumor-removal. Yeah,…
errortype:11 World’s Fastest Car was doomed from the beginning. The band was founded by Quicksand frontman Walter Schreifels and singer-guitarist Arty Shepherd after Schreifels’ former outfit dissolved on an ill-fated 1995 tour. And just like any relationship formed on the rebound, it was never meant to last. After two years…
Harry Connick Jr. and His Big Band It’s been 10 years since Harry met Sally and birthed their little Frankie Jr., 10 years since the son of the New Orleans district attorney went multi-multi and made it safe for young couples in love to cozy up to “But Not for…
There are moments in Ray Wylie Hubbard’s past he would prefer to forget, as well as some he honestly does not remember. But he offers one tale that he can recall from his lost years with neither embarrassment nor the barely concealed glee of the unreformed. “I came out of…
It should have been the biggest gig of the year for Josh Alan, local bluesman and contributor to the Dallas Observer. And Alan will probably still remember it for a long time to come — just for different reasons than he originally thought. KKZN-FM (93.3) assistant program director Abby Goldstein…
While we hate pointing out the errors of others — OK, maybe hate is too strong a word — we couldn’t help but notice that last week’s issue of The Met referred to Ronnie Dawson’s recent More Bad Habits as his “first studio album since the ’60s.” Well, that isn’t…
The Toadies will be the last band ever to perform on the stage of Austin’s Liberty Lunch on July 31, when the long-running club shuts its doors for the final time. Well, at least for the final time at its current location. Liberty Lunch will remain in business, reopening in…
Too often, a Robyn Hitchcock album is like a series of one-night stands: a lot of screwing around that never leads to anything meaningful. Inexplicable choruses follow free-association verses, with a flurry of gibberish obscuring everything but the chord changes. And when he does hit upon a lucid thought, it…
